Culling dingoes with poison may be making them bigger
Australia’s dingoes are getting bigger, and it may be because of humans. New research suggests the change is happening only in places where the wild canine’s populations are controlled with poison. The findings could illustrate for the first time that, when targeted with pesticides, changes to the physical traits of “pest” species can occur in bigger animals, not just insects and rodents. Scientists had noticed an increase in the size of some dingoes, but that there hasn’t been much understanding of what was causing it, says Michael Letnic, an ecologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He wondered if it was the consequence of decades of the dingoes’ status as a livestock pest. Dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) have long had an uneasy relationship with farmers and ranchers in rural Australia. The predators can attack livestock, usually sheep. Shooting and fencing have been used to control dingo populations and protect livestock....